Caucuses are not needed, some say
2:04 PM 5/21/01
Dee J. Hall and Phil Brinkman Wisconsin State Journal
Almost since the caucuses were founded in the mid-1960s, lawmakers have been questioning the need for - and the activities of - their four partisan state agencies.
This week, a Wisconsin State Journal investigation that included scrutinizing hundreds of documents and interviewing more than 70 people found many caucus workers routinely campaign on state time and with state resources. Such activities could violate the state Ethics Board's interpretation of Wisconsin ethics law.
"The process has been corrupted," said Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, a longtime caucus critic. "It's always been on the fringe. Now, it's absolutely corrupted."
When the caucuses started, they were intended to give staff support to lawmakers who, in some cases, had none. But these days, the picture is significantly different.
Now, each Assembly member has at least one staff member and each senator has at least three. Leaders of the two houses have up to seven aides each in their offices.
At the same time, nonpartisan agencies such as the highly respected Legislative Reference Bureau, Legislative Fiscal Bureau and Legislative Council have grown from relatively modest operations to powerhouse research engines employing hundreds of staff members - all dedicated to the task of helping lawmakers.
"The caucuses are not as important as they once were," Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, said last fall while campaigning for her Senate seat.
In her latest campaign, Harsdorf, who also served many years in the Assembly, advocated abolishing the caucuses as a way to save taxpayer money.
"(Eliminating them) is a way of recognizing that as we ask people to be more efficient, we should be, too," she said.
Tanya Bjork, a former Assembly Democratic Caucus director, said legislators' opinions about the caucuses vary depending on how much they use their services.
"In my experience, some members use the services a great deal and some use them hardly at all," said Bjork, now an aide to Sen. Brian Burke, D-Milwaukee.
Amid the campaigning revealed by the State Journal, the caucuses still provide legitimate work that some legislators and staff say is useful, especially for those new to the Capitol.
In addition to staffing committee meetings and helping get the word out on particular bills, caucus staffers occasionally lead workshops on hot-button topics like education and health care.
"Sometimes you can feel quite overwhelmed and it's nice to have that support staff over there saying, Do it like this,' " said Dan Johnson, an aide to Rep. Neal Kedzie, R-Elkhorn.
Kedzie's office relied heavily on the Assembly Republican Caucus recently to field calls from fellow Republicans and distribute news releases while Kedzie helped put the finishing touches on a compromise wetlands protection bill.
But some question whether the caucuses help - or harm - the legislative process.
Bob Menamin, who has run for the Legislature as both a Democrat and independent, said he believes the caucus system is not only "corrupt" but also "closes out any other candidates" by giving a select few unfair advantages.
Menamin said he was disturbed that Senate Democratic Caucus staffers worked on his race for a Wausau Senate seat in 1986 from their state office. As a result, Menamin, who later moved to Verona and was elected to the City Council, bypassed the two-party system altogether last year when he ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly.
"I came to realize that the whole system is institutionalized for Republicans and Democrats," Menamin said.
Menamin said the system excludes third parties and concentrates more power in the hands of the legislative leaders, who control the caucuses. A longtime Capitol observer, Charlie Sanders, a retired Assembly chief clerk, agreed with Menamin's point about the leadership and said "the state would be better off without the caucuses."
"The caucuses are an extension of the leadership, and they're focusing their efforts against each other, rewarding the people who help you and punishing or not helping the ones who don't help you," Sanders said.
Some lawmakers also question whether the caucuses still fulfill the role they were assigned when they were launched as part of an effort to professionalize the Legislature more than 30 years ago.
Rep. Frank Boyle, D-Superior, a 14-year veteran of the Legislature, said that in a recent closed session, some Assembly Democrats asked what the caucuses do. "We didn't get an answer. We don't know," Boyle said.

They're survivors
Lawmakers and former employees on both sides of the aisle say the caucuses have survived many attempts to kill them off mainly because neither side is willing to lay down its most potent weapon in the increasingly expensive and shrill battle over which party controls the Legislature.
"I think the primary reason the caucuses continue to exist is that it's an in-house political machine," said Greg DiMiceli, a former staff member of both the Senate Republican and Assembly Republican caucuses. "Anybody who tells you differently is not being honest.
"Some policy does come out (of the caucuses)," he said. "But primarily the real reason those caucuses exist is for campaigning." Rep. Mary Hubler, D-Rice Lake, said she's certain the caucuses engage in illicit activity, "and that's wrong." But she said it's unlikely Democrats would propose their elimination because Republicans traditionally raise more money for campaigns.
"To a certain extent, we (Democrats) would be outgunned," Hubler said. "I just think we're not going to unilaterally disarm."
Many lawmakers have gone down this path before. Even Gov. Scott McCallum, when he was a new Republican senator from Fond du Lac, briefly made headlines in 1981 when he called for abolishing the caucuses as a waste of taxpayer money.
Twenty years later, McCallum remains skeptical about their usefulness but stopped short of proposing any change to the system.
"Taxpayers' dollars ought to be used for taxpayer good and for public policy," McCallum said. "If they are not doing public policy, they should not be in existence."
He noted, however, that any change to the system would "have to get through the Legislature."
There is no current measure pending that would abolish or reform the caucuses. But some lawmakers are proposing to severely curtail the activities of the privately funded legislative campaign committees that provide legislative leaders with the money and means to influence campaigns across the state.
The State Journal's investigation found that the line often is blurred between these committees and the caucuses, which the committees rely on to carry out their campaign duties on behalf of candidates. While caucus staffers routinely take leave from their state jobs to campaign, the newspaper found they often also campaigned during working hours or from their state offices.
Harsdorf is among a bipartisan group of sponsors of Senate Bill 62, which would, among other things, limit the amount the committees can donate to political candidates. An identical bipartisan measure, Assembly Bill 155, is pending in the other house. Another bill, Senate Bill 104, sponsored by Ellis, also would curb spending by the campaign committees.
Ellis said he believes both the caucuses and legislative campaign committees should be eliminated. He said he tried to kill off the caucuses during the mid-1990s when he was Senate majority leader but couldn't get the support.
The caucuses also survived the efforts five years ago of a former whistleblower who exposed what he described as widespread abuse within two Democratic caucuses.
Mo Hansen spent five years working at the caucuses, first at the Assembly Democratic Caucus and later the Senate Democratic Caucus.
"I kept two time sheets - one for caucus work and one for political work," Hansen said, estimating that he spent "at least 75 percent" of his time on campaign work. "A couple of years in, I found it a fruitless task and I threw them away. For what seemed like an eternity, we were constantly in campaign mode.' "
Hansen said he got tired of what he was expected to do and resigned in 1996. Isthmus, Madison's alternative weekly newspaper, printed Hansen's story in October 1996, but Hansen said it quickly died out.
"Everyone agreed with the tack I was taking ... they just weren't willing to push the plunger (on the caucuses) and blow open the whole thing," Hansen said. "I was going to lob a grenade in there and see what happened.
"I don't think anything happened."

Caucuses by the numbers
17: The number of states, including Wisconsin, that have partisan research staffs for their lawmakers.
58: Approximate number of staff members employed by the four state agencies in 2000.
1965: The year a Ford Foundation-funded study recommended the caucus system as a way to professionalize the state Legislature. Wisconsin was one of the first states to use such a ystem.
$31,000: Approximate base salary for a caucus staffer. Salaries range up to about $70,000 a year.
$3.9 million: Amount the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates the caucuses cost taxpayers this year in salaries, rent and supplies.

Source: State Journal staff research